On his book Jazz Icons: Heroes, Myths and the Jazz Tradition
Cover Interview of August 08, 2010
Editor’s note
Originally, this interview ran on the Rorotoko cover page under the headline
“How and why legendary figures are needed to tell historical stories.”
We highlighted two quotes.
On the first page:
“It is irrelevant and impossible to know whether Ellington was in fact bisexual. However, what I am interested in is the problem this concept presents for jazz audiences and fans of Ellington alike.”
On the second:
“Besides turning everyday assumptions on their heads, Jazz Icons finds significance in things that usually go unnoticed.”
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
Editor’s note
Originally, this interview ran on the Rorotoko cover page under the headline
“How and why legendary figures are needed to tell historical stories.”
We highlighted two quotes.
On the first page:
“It is irrelevant and impossible to know whether Ellington was in fact bisexual. However, what I am interested in is the problem this concept presents for jazz audiences and fans of Ellington alike.”
On the second:
“Besides turning everyday assumptions on their heads, Jazz Icons finds significance in things that usually go unnoticed.”